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HEDONIC DAMAGES TRIAL
The Appellate Court noted that the trial court, who. omitted.) Smith is the same economist who testified as plaintiff's hedonic damages expert in this case. Expert testimony about such calculations are allowed in courts in some states, but not others. The trial court had also precluded the testimony of the same economist, Dr. As interpreted by the courts around the United States, hedonic damages means either a loss of enjoyment of life or loss of life's pleasures.' (Price, Hedonic Damages: To Value a Life or Not to Value a Life (1993) 95 W.Va. Some economists believe that such calculations are inappropriate, while others find them useful “benchmarks” for the losses of specific individuals.
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Finally, the annual value of life is used to create a present value of the loss for the life expectancy of the injured person or decedent. To warrant the award, the claimant must show that a breach of duty has caused foreseeable loss. The difference between the value of a “whole life” and the value of lifetime earnings of an average person is treated as the value of the average person’s ability to enjoy life. At common law, damages are a remedy in the form of a monetary award to be paid to a claimant as compensation for loss or injury. Smith pioneered the first course in Forensic Economics at DePaul University, based on his textbook, Economic/Hedonic Damages: The Practice Book for. Lawyers seeking hedonic damages in personal injury cases. (Such values can also be derived from “wage-risk” studies based on the wage premiums workers are paid for taking more than the average risk of death in their employments.) After a specific value of life is assumed for a “whole life,” a subtraction is made for the lifetime earnings of an “average” person. Hedonic damages compensate for the lost enjoyment of life that results from a tortious injury. That literature is based on a “willingness-to-pay” methodology that estimates the value of a “statistically anonymous human life” from the amount individual consumers pay to reduce safety risks just enough to prevent the loss of one human life.
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Hedonic Damages - The term “hedonic damages” usually refers to a measurement of an estimate of the dollar value of the loss of or a reduction in an individual’s “ability to enjoy life.” A calculation of hedonic damages usually begins with assuming a specific “whole value of life” from the “value of life” literature.
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